A hand holds a small salad on a clear plate
(Photo by Rick Kern/Getty Images for Target)If you’re like me, you’ve noticed that media reports about food prices significantly on the rise are a reality. Just observing the things in the supermarket that I buy regularly, I see how the price of food is depressing.
While the food in bodegas and food stores is much higher than last year, it’s still cheaper than restaurants and cafes.
According to the Wall Street Journal, people bought fewer lunches last year than they did during the pandemic. In 2020, going out wasn’t much of an option, yet more take-out lunches were sold during the shutdown.
That’s a great way to save money every day. If you normally spend ten to fifteen dollars for a to-go lunch, that’s about twenty-five hundred to four thousand dollars a year.
However, if you bring your lunch to work with food purchased at the supermarket, you can save more than half that amount every day. If you do your homework and plan your lunches properly, you will save somewhere between fifteen hundred to two thousand dollars per year.
1 Example of How I Save Thousands on Lunch
I usually have a Southwest salad for lunch. If I bought a Southwest Chicken Caesar Salad at a restaurant like Saladworks, according to their website, it would cost me at least $12.99. That price doesn’t include extras like black olives (99 cents) or bacon ($2.49).
Based on the Panera Bread website, the similar Southwest Chicken Ranch Salad would set me back $12.69 plus $3.29 for bacon.
I buy the Southwest Chopped Salad Kit at Sam’s Club for $2.82. That’s a minimum savings of almost eleven dollars a day, fifty-five dollars and week, and around $2,800 a year.
The fact is that people are bringing their lunch to work much more than they used to, and it’s paying off. According to the WSJ report, the number of lunches purchased at restaurants is three percent less than last year. Meal preparation pays off.
I also suggest you analyze your daily coffee expenses. I don’t need to do the math for you to know how much you’d save on coffee if you change your routine. If you made a full pot of coffee for pennies each day rather than buy that three or four-dollar Starbucks or Dunkin you’d be saving a lot of beans.
